


you said, you said, you said

by queerofcups



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-14
Updated: 2017-05-14
Packaged: 2018-10-31 18:14:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10904745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queerofcups/pseuds/queerofcups
Summary: a collection of fills i did for the 'things you said' meme on tumblr





	1. things you said on the phone at 4am

“I mean it’s not like…”

Phil opens his eyes with some difficulty, looking over at his laptop. The brightness is turned all the way down and the screen is mostly dark anyway. Dan’s wrapped up in a blanket, his dark hair haloing his face. He’d paused hour three of this conversation to shower, so its curled into soft waves that Dan kept apologizing for. After the tenth or eleventh time Phil had told him firmly that he loved the curls and wished he could see them in real life.

Dan had smiled and Phil’s stomach flipped. He’d reminded himself then, like he’s reminding himself now that Dan is young, and in a relationship (with a girl) and that they’re friends and that’s all.

Phil might let himself imagine what else they could be on his own time, but not now.

He glances at the clock and huffs a little. Its 4 in the morning and he has to go to class in the morning. It doesn’t feel like they’ve been talking for five hours, even if that’s what the clock tells him.

“It’s not like what?” he asks, remember Dan’s voice waking him from his half-doze.

The view shifts as Dan shrugs and takes a deep breath. Phil isn’t sure how Dan can stand to chat with the computer resting on his chest like that. Whenever Phil tries that he always feels trapped, like the computer is getting heavier and heavier. It’s not that different from the way he feels when he thinks about his feelings about Dan too hard—it’s the same sort of hard-to-breathe tightness, the same disconnect from the reality of the situation.

“It’s not like she didn’t know. And it’s not like I’m going to go out and ravish the next guy I see just because I know that I’m…bi or whatever.”

Ah yes. Phil makes a listening noise and closes his eyes. He’s somehow become the sounding board for Dan’s conflicts with his girlfriend. The latest one being about Dan mouthing off about attractive guys around her. Dan’s so certain that he should be allowed to do that sort of thing without her being miffed. Phil sort of disagrees, and feels sort of bad that he’s not defending her more, but this friendship, the intensity of this friendship is still so new that he’s not sure he can tell Dan so.   
Phil keeps making listening noises while Dan goes on and on, his rant interspersed with long yawns.

Phil’s definitely mostly still asleep, but he still hears, “I mean the only guy I actually might fancy is 300 miles away so.”

He keeps his eyes closed. That’s a thrilling, terrifying problem for future Phil. Phil of the Future can be delighted and mortified that Dan (who’s so brave, and lovely and young and still has a girlfriend) actually worked up the courage to finally say that out loud, but Current Phil has a class in a few hours and doesn’t have the energy to parse through.

“…Phil?” Dan asks. If Phil opened his eyes he could see Dan’s facial expression and probably Phil obligated to return to that statement and start a conversation about their age difference, and Dan’s relationship and distance and friendship and blah blah blah. And Phil still has a class in a few hours.

Instead, he breathes in and out deeply, lets himself drift closer to sleep.

“Okay,” Dan says quietly, sounding pouty. “Fine, just ignore me. Goodnight Phil.”

Phil rolls his closed eyes and keeps breathing. Future Phil can deal with his unfortunate crush on the brattiest teenager in the entire world tomorrow.


	2. things you said that made me feel real

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a lil addendum to 'read me like no one else'

The version of Dan’s voice that lives in Phil’s head never shuts the fuck up.

Part of him had thought that with distance would dampen things (thousands of miles of deep, green water between his parent’s house and Florida).

Instead, he gets the sort impression of words, asking him how much longer his flight is, asking how he can stand to be scrunched into the tiny airplane seat, asking how he can stand to watch such shit movies. 

Phil had decided to drop the cold gray mental block he’d put up between his mind and Dan’s just a few weeks ago. He’s not reacted or responded to any of Dan’s thoughts yet, just lets them wash over him. It had taken Dan days to notice at all, and since then Phil had been privy to every third thought Dan had. Part of him wonders if Dan even realizes the way his thoughts leak out of his head and into Phil’s.

Phil’s also pretty sure he’d been picking up sensations from Dan when he was back in England, but _those_ stopped in the third or fourth hour of the flight. He’s grateful. He wasn’t prepared to explain to anyone why he was shivering into exploring hands that weren’t there.

Instead, he gets to hear Dan’s running commentary on his classmates, his roommates, campus, how boring his studies are, the video idea he’d rather be working on, his thoughts on Phil’s latest video, what he and Phil could be doing if Phil were there instead of on a metal tube hurtling through the air.

What he isn’t saying, but Phil can hear anyway, is the soft worry that he’s talking into a void, that Phil isn’t, and won’t ever be, listening.

That part he’d said to Phil out loud too, staring out from a laptop screen. It was part of the reason Phil dropped the wall in the first place.

Now though, now he was hesitating because a. Dan never let him get a thought in and b. he didn’t know what to say. It unnerves him to think of how often Dan thinks of him, at him. He doesn’t know what to do with this kind of devotion, this kind of affection.

When they’re talking face to face, he can cover it up with a funny noise, or just tackle Dan to the floor so they don’t have to talk. Here though, in his head, he can’t hide anything, can’t hide his apprehension, his worry, or the naked adoration he feels for Dan all the time.

 _I can feel that_ , Dan says. The Dan-voice that lives in his head feels different, like he’s speaking from another room. They haven’t been close enough for Phil to see if it clears up with proximity. It’s a surprise to hear such a direct thought, more of a surprise to know Dan can feel what he’s feeling.

 _There’s nothing for you to worry about_ , Dan tells him. Phil looks out of the window of the plane. The sky had been clear most of the flight, but the pilot told them to expect some turbulence as they approached a bit of weather.

Phil can see it, just barely, the robin’s egg blue of the sky bleeding into something a little dark, a little foreboding.

Dan can feel him. Phil feels a little hysterical with the thought. He’d been certain that he was safe, that he had time and space to calm his feelings into something more orderly, more presentable before he gave them over for Dan to rifle through.

He wonders, not a little afraid, how long Dan’s been able to feel him.

 _A while_ , Dan offers. He sounds a little cheeky and Phil closes his eyes. He’s still not responded on purpose. It’s seeming more and more like it doesn’t matter whether he means to or not.

Phil opens his eyes, looks out into the sky. He looks and looks and thinks and tries to push the image of the sky towards the area of his brain that feels like Dan lives there.

 _Oh_! Dan sounds surprised. _I didn’t think you would ever…_

Phil feels his face warm up and he covers his mouth so his parents don’t catch sight of the shit eating grin spreading across his face. They aren’t his feelings, he still feels anxious, teeming with worry and incredulity that Dan’s been listening in on his feelings the whole time. The warmth and the smile are all Dan, delighted with Phil finally acknowledging him.

This is their first proper conversation through the bond. Dan sending him happiness that feels like lemon candies, sour-sweet and mouth curling and Phil sending him an image of the wide-open blue sky, timid and full of possibility.

 _You’re here_ , Dan says over and over again, _you’re here you’re here this is real you’re real_

Phil tries to send back words because of course he’s real, they’ve been best friends for nearly two years now.

Instead, he’s only able to send a quick montage like a flipbook, an assortment of tweets and messages and skype sessions and those rare memories of skin-on-skin contact. This is real, for him. They are real.

 _Don’t ignore me again_ , Dan says. There’s no anxiety this time, just steel-spine determination that Phil couldn’t say no to if he wanted to.

Even if he wanted to, Phil’s certain he’d never be able to ignore Dan again.


	3. things you said when i was crying

“I’m home,” Phil calls into the quiet flat. It’s a little after midnight. He’d been thrilled to be coming home on a flight that wasn’t a red-eye and insisted on Dan not coming to meet him and his family at the airport. As adorable as grumpy-about-being-in-public-while-sleepy Dan was, Phil was happy to make his way to the new flat by himself. He’d only gotten part of the way to the old flat before realizing that he was going in the wrong direction and getting a cab in the right direction. 

The silence of the flat answers him and he frowns, climbing the stairs. He drops his suitcase in his room and continues on to the room he shares with Dan. He’s not had the time to figure out what to refer to the two rooms as. Lately, he’s been thinking of “his” room as a filming studio/closet and Dan’s as simply theirs. 

Closing the door to his room, he continues down the hall towards the other bedroom down the hall. Both lounges had been empty and chilly with the a/c that Dan had fallen in love with and been abusing since they’d moved in. Phil wasn’t surprised to find Dan, curled up in the middle of the circular bed, surrounded by all the pillows and wrapped up in the ridiculous, luxurious blanket that he barely let Phil touch. 

“You know, if you didn’t turn the a/c up so high you wouldn’t have to—“ 

Phil stops talking when Dan looks up at him with dark, wet eyes.

 “Hey,” Dan says, sniffing a little. 

“Hey!” Phil says back, coming over. He kicks his shoes off and climbs on the bed. “Hey, hey. It’s ok, I’m home now.”

Dan sniffs again and gives him a strange look. “Yes? I heard you come in. And got the flight notification. And your texts when you went to the old flat, you noodle.”

“Well!” Phil says, gesturing at Dan and, upon seeing them, the pile of tissues on Dan’s other side. 

“Oh,” Dan says and rolls his, still very wet, eyes. He gestures at the computer with one blanket paw. Phil squints at the screen, bright in the darkness of the room, and rolls his eyes. 

“It just gets me every time,”Dan says, shrugging, “Watch with me?”

He opens his arms/blanket cave and Phil lets himself be tucked in next to Dan. He sighs and yawns a little. Their electric bill is going to be outrageous, but it is really nice to be tucked into this burrito of warmth in the chilly apartment. 

“I’m mostly over crying when you’re gone,” Dan tells him, leaning his body heavily against Phil’s. They’d only been apart a week, had spent all of Playlist together before that, but Phil’s grateful for the familiar weight. 

“You only tweeted sad, cryptic tweets a few times,” Phil agrees, wrapping an arm around Dan’s waist. Dan hums to himself and hits the replay button. They sit together, watchin[g the Broadway cast of The Lion King, cooped up in some airplane, belting The Circle of Life.](http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DwgSLxl1oAwA&t=NDFlZGY4YTM4NjNiYjU3YTJhOWJjMGQ2MmRhNmNlOWEzMDQzMjc4OSxzRU9PUlFGbQ%3D%3D&b=t%3A8BafCp7R-rs0_wVvSD4bwQ&p=https%3A%2F%2Fqueerofcups.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F160415010059%2F9-things-you-said-when-i-was-crying&m=0) Dan sniffles a little and Phil pulls him closer. 


	4. things you said in a hotel room

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in response to dan's cheeky playlist selfie  
> (its probably not his leg, but we can dream)

“Bit of your leg’s out,” Phil says, handing Dan the phone back.

 Dan sits in the middle of their bed. Music’s playing from the bathroom in the other, connected room, technically his actual room. It’s some fidgety pop song he’s been listening to on repeat since they left London. He’d heard Phil humming it during the meet and great earlier today. Dan had queued it up on his laptop while washing his face and guzzling water. They had to be back out of their room soon, so there was no point to jumping in the shower to wash of the sweat Florida’s humidity spouted on his skin, but he at least had the time to peel off his jeans and cool off some.

He looks down at the picture. It’s a good one, he looks good in that way that makes his stomach squirm a little, the part of him that gets nervous whenever anyone notices his looks, suggests that he doesn’t have to work quite as hard just because his face it put together a particular way. 

“Yeah. I’ll delete it,” he says, glancing over at Phil.

 “What for?” Phil asks, looking at his own phone. “It’s a good picture. No one’s gonna notice a little leg.”

Dan scoffs and Phil laughs. 

“Ok, they definitely will, but it’s fine. It’s a good leg.”

He reaches over and pats the pale thigh in question. Dan frowns and makes a mental note to get some sun during the vacation after Playlist.

Phil looks back at his phone but leaves his hand resting on Dan’s thigh, sweeping his thumb across Dan’s skin. 

Dan looks at the selfie again and shrugs. There’s something about the homey but unremarkable set up of hotel rooms against the backdrop of places that aren’t home that gives him something a little less carefully controlled, a little more brave.  He feels it less in Florida, surrounded by their audience and co-workers, and Phil’s family, than he did in Singapore and Australia, but its still there, echoing Phil’s firm and loving, _it’s a good leg_. 

Dan shrugs and hits the post button. It’s a good leg, anyway.


	5. things you said when you were scared

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this fill is within the you wanted to eat up my sadness 'verse

Phil gets scared sometimes. He loves Dan. He does. But sometimes the sadness, the anxiety feels so big and bad. It feels like something that controls Dan, like something Phil has to battle every time he wants to get into Dan’s head, something that’s always pushing him away. Phil wants to burn it away, wants to eat it all up, anything to get it away from Dan.  But he can’t. He can’t.

“I can’t do this,” he says, staring at his laptop. Dan’s crying. He’s been crying for at least an hour, talking about the fear mounting in his chest, shaking him out of his skin, chattering his teeth together. Sometimes, it feels like Phil knows him better like this than any other way, like this is the Dan he knows best and any other version is just Dan in the interim.

“You can’t…” Dan looks up at screen, looks at him across miles and wires and too much space. If he were here, Phil could wrap him in his arms, could press their chests together, could ground Dan in what’s real and immediate.   
Instead, he sits in his apartment and realizes he can’t help Dan like this, maybe he can’t help Dan at all. And if he can’t do that, what good is he to Dan at all?

“I can’t do this,” Phil says again, looking at Dan. Dan starting to ask questions, but Phil shakes his head and closes out of Skype.

He’s expecting a riot of messages. When he lets himself go, Dan’s anxiety turns into a tsunami of questions, verbalizing the ways he can think of ten worst possible scenarios all at once, regardless of logic or realism.

Phil’s phone is silent.

Phil realizes that that was likely one of the worst possible scenarios Dan’s imagined. He looks at his computer, where the Skype toolbar sits even though he’s logged out. He opens and looks through gmail on his phone, makes sure his text inbox is empty.

His phone is silent and he’s given Dan his worst possible scenario. He curses and logs back into Skype. Dan’s logged out.

hey, Phil sends him anyway. that was really dumb. sorry :(. please come back?

He waits for a few seconds, then sends Dan the same message through email then texts him.

He waits five minutes. Then ten. The twenty. It’s not silent, really, he can hear people moving around outside, he can hear cars pass. He can hear himself, telling Dan that he can’t do “this”. What would Dan even think “this” is? Phil couldn’t handle their relationship? He couldn’t handle Dan’s anxiety? He couldn’t handle Dan if he wasn’t always at his best?

Phil groans and pulls up Dan’s name in his contacts, calls him. He’s preparing to talk to the voicemail, ready to start apologizing at the sound of the tone.

“What?” Dan asks. He sounds tired, and stuffy, the way he does when he’s been crying but stopped a while ago.

“Dan!” Phil says, surprised. “Dan, I’m so sorry. I just. It was just a lot, and you’re so sad all the time and I—“

Dan sighs. “Yeah. That was a pretty dick move.”

Phil blinks. “Are you…are you ok?”

He glances at the computer. Dan’s still not logged into Skype.

“Well, no,” Dan says, like Phil’s an asshole. Which, fair. “My friend…boyfriend…whatever, just hung up on me after going ‘I can’t do this’. What the fuck, Phil?”

Phil grimaces. “I’m really sorry. It was just. Scared?”

Dan makes an unimpressed noise. “You’ve never been afraid of my anxiety before. Its not going to hurt you. It’s too busy reminding me that I’m a failure at everything. Including having a boyfriend, apparently.”

“You’re not a failure,” Phil says quickly. “You’re wonderful and one of the best people I know. And I know your anxiety isn’t going to hurt me. But it hurts you. It seems like it hurts you all the time. That’s scary, Dan.”

Dan grunts. “Yes. Imagine how it must feel for me.”

Phil snorts a little. He can’t help it.  He knows that if Dan was really done with him he would have hung up by now, if he answered at all. These little snarky responses were a good sign.

“Look,” Dan says flatly. “I don’t have the monopoly on bad feelings in this thing we’re doing. You can tell me if you feel…overwhelmed or whatever. I can dial it back. Or find someone else to talk to.”

“Don’t shrink yourself,” Phil says firmly. He’s been working on getting Dan allowing himself to be as big as his personality is and he refuses to be the reason Dan goes back to trying to shrink into someone else’s idea of how he should act. “Just. Maybe having one more person you can talk to?”

“Fine,” Dan says. He sounds tired and Phil hates that he’s part of the reason why. “I can chat to someone else some time. But you’ve got to tell me when you need a break. I don’t read minds.”

Phil’s pretty certain their best friend/boyfriend bond is strong enough to count as telepathy most days, but he agrees.

“Will you log back on?” Phil asks tentatively, looking at Dan’s screenname on the toolbar. He’s pretty sure they’re ok now, but he’d like to see Dan’s face, to be sure.

“No,” Dan says quietly. “I’m not—we’re ok. But that was fucked up Phil. I’m still upset with you.”

Phil signs and nods, even though Dan can’t hear him. “Ok. Tomorrow?”

“…tomorrow.” Dan confirms. Phil smiles down at his comforter, relieved. He’s pretty sure they’ll be ok. He still feels it, the fear of this thing that grips Dan sometimes, pulls him away from Phil and tosses him around, but it feels like he can tell Dan that now, like they can work on it.

**Author's Note:**

> come chat at queerofcups.tumblr.com!


End file.
